Grevich looked out the window as a a giant arm broke the portal room and continued to grow. In between the arm and the leg was a bulge where the shoulder connected to the thigh. If it was a scene from a movie, it would have looked disturbing and a little comical—only, Grevich couldn’t laugh because he had witnessed dragonslayer Ineza disappear from the city while a message from [Witch] Grettfield blared in his head.
‘Do not engage the titan, it is moving on instinct, any battle will level the city, I am attempting to teleport it away. All adventurers are to form a perimeter to engage the shadows. All civilians are to flee or find shelter immediately.’
Code red had been blaring for perhaps thirty seconds now but the skyscraper of Raidco’s Mastery was designed with adventurers in mind, running when he was so close to the center was probably an incorrect move.
Shadows of the dead started to pop into existence from the base of the massive pillar of flesh. Skeletons and shadowy hostile creatures. While most of them were humanoid. Some… were undead versions of monsters he recognized from a bestiary.
At least before they were speed-blitzed by a dragonslayer.
Any shade appearing within the perimeter they had set up were being slaughtered by what looked like a [Barbarian] with golden wings. At least, Grevich assumed so because the other dragonslayer was in the sky next to Grettfield, keeping guard on her.
Looking up.
When Grevich did the same, his jaw dropped.
Shades seemed to start spawning from the sky at random, most of them were falling, spreading out. Sometimes, dark purple flames would accompany their existence.
San Kingsgrove had a magical barrier above it, the domed barrier did nothing to creatures that were summoned inside the city.
Though it wasn’t completely without defenses.
Old turrets whirred to life from the edges of the city and started to fire at the creatures falling around them, adventurers leapt to the skies to take the creatures down or block the flames from landing on the civilians.
It wasn’t enough. Grevich watched as a car was covered up by flames, the entire family within being consumed in one last look of horror… Grevich looked away as the car exploded.
When he looked back, the purple flames spread out like heat-seeking missiles. Going towards the other cars around it.
One purple ball of flame slammed into the glass below him, shaking him out of his shock. The enchantments flared and held against the magical, seeking fire. Grevich almost breathed a sigh of relief before the fire stuck onto the building and spread, covering it whole and continuously eating away at the enchantments.
Oh.
Grevich turned to run, sprinting down the hallway and towards the elevator.
It said a lot that even someone that worked with adventurers had taken this long before he realized he truly was in danger.
——
Grettfield was still adjusting the teleportation spell on the fly as shades and enchanted flame descended on her city. If she wasn’t so focused on getting the primary threat out of here she would have dealt with all of it herself.
She turned to her ally standing close. He had come back after realizing there was still an unknown threat in the air.
“A Lich is in the sky, can you see through its invisibility?”
“No. Even if I could, I’m not leaving you exposed.”
“My city is on fire.”
Grettfield hissed, more than a little bit of venom leaking through her voice. Her team member was not concerned by her threatening tone.
“Then hurry up with the teleportation and we’ll take it out together.”
It was easy for him to say. You couldn’t just throw a massive pillar of flesh with this much weight and power through a simple gate. If it wasn’t stable enough, then she risked it breaking out ahead of time and potentially flattening her city or another city on the way to her target destination.
A streak of fire landed on the ground and dashed towards a screaming couple that were too slow to get out of the way.
The [Aegis Guardian] next to her threw down a [Airtight Barrier] to contain the fire and smothered it out by reducing the surface area. The [Guardian] wrinkled his nose.
“That’s a targeted spell, I thought [Shades of the Dead] weren’t supposed to be intelligent without her control.”
Grettfield gritted her teeth.
“Apparently, that doesn’t apply to Liches.”
Despite with the screams in the burning city, her dragonslayer allies were cold about what was a priority here. Throwing down a few [Barriers] was okay, but the [Guardian] would not push himself further to save everyone in the city. They all understood the priority well.
That was the thing, all three of them were dragonslayers, they had been here before.
Trying to save dying, screaming cities on fire? That was just their seventh Trial.
Unfortunately, this was where Ineza being around could have saved them a lot of trouble. The Lich King floating around invisibly was a weak realm ten threat at best. The only problem was that it had taken partial control over the [Shades of the Dead] and had more empowered casting than Grettfield wanted to admit.
“Call Ineza, tell her to come back with an invisibility piercing artifact. Tell her that the pillar in the middle won’t fight as long as it’s not attacked.”
The [Guardian] tried his phone and shook her head.
“No signal, her emergency escape probably hasn’t finished yet.”
Grettfield would remember that the coward had fled like a rat. For now, all of her focus was on the teleport matrix.
And hoping enough of her city would survive by the time she was done.
——
The winds died down as the landscape blurred around them. They’d fled, fled like cowards in the face of a disaster and appeared in the middle of a cornfield—
Though Ryan’s mind was still stuck in his skill, dissecting the perspective that had been thrown at him. The amalgamation of minds, instinct and concepts overwhelmed him and—
He threw up.
Dragonslayer Ineza patted him on the back.
“First time using an emergency artifact?”
It wasn’t the emergency transportation that had made him throw up. It was the tail end of the [Glimpse of Perspective]. Ryan had seen a glimpse of the true nature of what was within the pillar of flesh that was Pinkie. A conflicting mess of everything, reinforced by her own damned class.
He also felt like he’d done something more than just activate a skill and push his limits. He wasn’t sure if he could activate that skill again for a long time, even the idea of it made him nauseous.
It looked as if pushing unity didn’t just come with power.
“Take us back. I can… I can do something.”
Ineza just dismissed his words as mere bravado.
“No, you can’t. That thing was an adventurer that had been developing a nascent Legend. It looked like she tried to do too much with it and failed horribly.”
Ineza didn’t know or understand anything.
Ryan was still pissed off that she had taken him away from the battle. That she herself had ran away and dragged him with her.
Not that he told her off for it. There was no point antagonizing the only person that could take him back. Even as his mind rang out from pushing his skill beyond, he started to think of a solution.
How do I solve this? A [Witch’s] curse can be removed through understanding what they were using as a core for the hex.
Pinkie’s entire class had been corrupted. She was still in there, but her mind was dulled, whatever estimations he had of the Passive Tyrant, it was infinitely higher after having seen that arm and leg. It was as if the flesh alone was alive and filled with concepts. Was that how it worked? If you were at a high enough level did even your body just become part concept?
It was like… it could think…
And Ryan realized Grettfield had beaten him to the answer. She used her voice to placate the monster and make sure to establish to the thing that nobody was a threat to it.
Something like that wouldn’t have worked on Pinkie, but the Passive Tyrant?
Oh.
He wasn’t the only competent adventurer around.
He didn’t have to be the one saving the day.
Remembering that calmed him down.
It was just in time for both of their phones to get signal again and for Ineza’s phone to ring.
“This is Ineza speaking. Yes I can’t head back. My talisman took me well over a thousand miles away and it will take at least ten minutes for me to make it back by foot. You want a invisibility debuffing artifact? Hmm, I’ll send a message through to a ninth realm that has their location keyed back to San Kingsgrove. Good luck, I’ll be heading back as soon as I can.”
She hung up and was clearly not ready to immediately head back into the battlefield as soon as she could.
“What’s going on?”
“A siege in the city, an invisible tenth realm assaulting the city. You were right, I shouldn’t have headed back so soon.”
“Take me with you.”
“No, adventurer Robinson. I’d rather you not be cannon fodder in a dragonslayer tier battle. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go help save the day.”
And she disappeared from sight… leaving Ryan stranded in the middle of… he had no idea other than that he was surrounded by a field… over a thousand miles from San Kingsgrove.
That was when his phone started to ring.
“Ryan! Ryan! I saw the news, are you okay?!”
“No, Clara, I’m really not fucking okay right now.”
He checked his location on his phone then started to jog back. Back to the battlefield.
All the while, a plan started to form in his head.
——
San Kingsgrove.
An ordinary mortal had finally reached the ground floor of a burning skyscraper. The flames had already reached down to cover the entrances and there was no way out. Not that the mortal intended to do so. Not while more monsters and purple flames kept taking people out.
Whatever that contraption had been that allowed the mortal to stare out at the city on fire had caught the Lich King’s eye.
It turned out their transparent transportation device to go up and down large buildings could be used as an exquisite torture chamber. He had thrown down a fireball specially in front of that mortal just to let him see the people of his city burn and be turned into undead.
It was entertaining, seeing a city of the future and testing its various advancements.
So soft. Mortals were always soft, but this one was especially so, was this what lay ahead for peaceful worlds?
“Pathetic.”
Oh the dragonslayers were plenty dangerous but the little ants below? Pathetic, unprepared, screaming at a single death or a simple undead.
Not that he could truly kill and test out the mettle of these mortals as he pleased. The dragonslayers below him would drop everything and come after him if he truly attempted to push too far.
In that sense it was a game of balance. As long as the Lich King kept his output controlled, he could freely play with the city and see just how the Witch Tyrant’s vision for her true civilization had gone.
The defenses were truly interesting. All of the enchantments were hyper-efficient, an adaptation to the mana-poor environment of this world. The turrets firing at speeds in the fifth realm without magic was interesting but not much of a threat.
The mortals though… they still screamed the same way. For all of their sophistication and use of fancy devices without mana, they were still mortals in the end.
Too soft. The adventurers were okay at best but where were the mortals that took up arms even though they were outmatched. The head of someone that was wearing an ornamental buckler came off without them even trying to raise it against a skeleton he was deliberately moving slowly.
No wonder he was called upon for a task like this.
Now he was testing the mortal in the best enchanted building yet. The Lich King was focused on that and that mortal alone. Seeing how far he could push him and whether he was someone that could be nurtured.
Another two fireballs descended onto the building as the mortal fled like a rat.
The enchantments started to burn as the Lich King focused. He threw a few more shades out for amusement and to distract the adventurers from the building. There were actually some ninth realms that were flying around, trying to kill the shades in the air and to find his location.
Unfortunate, no matter how much the [Witch] was trying to direct them to its location.
Crack.
The enchantments in the building broke as the magical fire of the undead rushed into the building. It went right for the mortal running away until it felt a tug against it—
Ah that’s one of them.
The Lich King had specific instructions to not touch certain mortals affected by the [Witch’s Bargain].
Which was a fair price. If it could be brought back to life again to live life in a glorious manner, not being able to kill a few select mortals was fine with it.
…Though the Lich King himself knew a little better about nurturing the proper environment to raise heroes entrenched in eternal vengeance.
The purple flames split around the mortal frozen in fear, it rushed past Grevich and left a simple way out.
The mortal, confused, saw the fires rush down behind him—towards the elevator that went to the basement levels.
Now what will you do?
The mortal stood there dumbly, his way out paved for him while the fires rushed down to the basement. Towards where his colleagues and friends were hiding.
The mortal could run, or he could try to save them.
Either way, such a thing would never be forgotten, not as long as the mortal lived.
To spice things up, the Lich King even whispered through his flames and into the mortal’s ears.
‘You can run and save yourself, or you can go down there and listen to their last moments as their very souls scream out in pain. Who knows, make it down there fast enough and I might even let you save one. What will you do, mortal?’
Grevich stared at the flames as the Lich King watched in amusement.
Moments like these were what often defined who they turned out to be. No matter what, the Lich King intended to cause maximum mental damage.
Grevich pulled out a rectangular device.
“Priority message, warning to all adventurers and civilians, there is an intelligent, malicious creature behind these flames. Behavior is similar to the Skeleton Lord but likely more malevolent, do not fall for its traps. Remember, it is better to die bravely than betray your own team.”
The Lich King blinked.
And Grevich ran down the stairs.
It was both insulted and impressed at the same time. It would make sure that—
A shining sapphire axe-head shattered his barrier and went right through the Lich King’s skull.
It had been so distracted with the mortal that it hadn’t been paying attention to the reinforcements that had arrived. Or in this case, just one newly minted dragonslayer.